Because it does feel insanely cold after a heat wave of mid-70°s spoil Fall season treatment, oooookay!!!
Last night after finishing butterlap, I saw the temperature had reached 40°. It didn’t feel too cold, but my cheeks were nice and crisp. I love that feeling.
One of the mornings before the Thanksgiving break, my girlfriend Muffin and I got together for another one of our early morning coffee sessions. We try to chose different locations around town from time to time. The weather indicated 39° that day and it was also pretty windy. As a whimpy native Californian, I knew it was remarkably cold when my fingers got a little numb while riding.

See, it wasn’t that cold if this guy was roaming in shorts. So was I, but with my tights under.

Getting some sunshine on Market.

Layered.

This cute guy was spotted near the Ferry Bldg.

Downtownlands

Well that was before 8am or so, after I caught some warmth and got rid of that jacket after taking this shot that morning. I almost that silly jacket which is not really functional but to feel like a mix of a Michelin-man and a human burrito at the same time. This jacket is not even water-repellant, a total FAIL in the lands of fog maximus. I never wear it, but I can almost say it was nice to wear it that morning and my friend loves to tease me since I have been saying for almost a decade that I will soon donate it. So I wore it to make her laugh about it. Soon…

It is finally here! Another MEGA fun behind-the-scenes post, for the day we were all fashion bicycle models for Pedal Savvy at the SF Bike Expo in the Cow Palace, November 6th.
This was fun, we modeled, got tons of hairspray and fancy stuff on our hair, got our make-up done and off we went.

getting lots of hair spraysssssstsssssss

cheeeeeeese
here I am!!
I love this photo of KT, while she wasn’t looking =)
make-up session. and I was ready for mi second dose of coffee!“…Shall we read the following chapter…”
sssssup
the show isn’t complete without Gwen’s mom around =) We love her!!
Patricia
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/meligrosa/5177470017/" title="Katieeee <img alt="Katieeee
Katie super star doing some finishing touches on the bicycles.

The bikes included brands like Felt (mine came with a coffee cup holder…how apropos) Public, Electra, dutch bicycle, Globe, Dahon, and even a bamboo bike!!
bisous for everybody
Gwen at work
Gwen and us — HAAAAAAAY

There was some review around the interwebs, blabbing upon how this stuff was so hip, unnatainable and how much it didn’t represent the bicycle community across the states. You know what —- this is San Francisco and it is a world-class city with all its flaws, beauties and struggles. We were all there because we opted to do so, opted to support our friend Gwen and the SF Bike Expo team and we are ALL riders between the ages of 18 to 40+, and although we don’t represent everybody, we do our best to do so, work our ass off either in school or jobs, and bike every day. We also had two young children to model for the evening show with their dad, so cute!
Know that the companies and tailors, many of them locally-based, that provided their goods to be shown off, were more than proud to do so. We all don’t buy an entire outfit, nor buy the latest and greatest to ride — we are here because is fun, we are city people and if you don’t like to see us having fun and enjoying our day off by being here all day in this fabulous bike fashion show, then don’t get caught up judging against it. I’m also not about to promote the mentioned site link, which is in no big city, but somewhere in the east coast and probably snowed in. So that’s that and that said..

Let your body move to the music, hey, hey, hey.

Come on, vogue.

We had our favorite paparazzi and friends in the house!
we all love Richard
Dustyyyyyyyyyyy…and then, the camera loves you
JD scored some rims
the we had a brush-up session
we are readyyyyyy to go!
Robin’s finishing touches
triple troubles!! =))))
Matching reds – I hearts Joe!!
amour de ma sunglasses — mi amiga KT of VéloVogue

KT et moi had way too much fun back there!
We had a huge bike pile going on, so here are most of our bikes. It does a body good.
—-

And what is a bloggera to do, asides drinking coffee and taking photos….

Richard caught me right-handed doing both, here is me and below the shot I took from the stage:
and here is, once again a shot from the bikecatwalk shot from the stage! =)))

The SF bike expo was a long but super fun day of everything bikeuniverse.
We had a break between the fashion shows at around 1PM and later that afternoon, so we got to wander around and enjoy some bike action. Was nice check out the booths, meet up with my peeps, super fun to see the cyclocross races and the butt-kicking women, and the awesome BMX/dirt jumping events. SO RAD.

And so it goes, the day began like this:
KT, Kevin and I in the morning. We met for coffee but I don’t think I was fully conscious yet – I certainly needed lots of my beloved caffeine that morning.

Dave, Ed and their schwinn crew. These peeps of ours are always such early birds, love it!!

The scraper bikes from Oakland, were in the house. The always bring a freshly made soundtrack/CD and sell it for about 5$-10$. Sweet!
Scraper circles

I got 5 on it.

Lots of people were outside checkin out the events, races and Etc.

A stylin’ lady stikes a pose with her classy blue bike

And then, a tremendous hour of pure awesomeness:
– – – –
meanwhile back inside, miz Sara Murder and team at the Pushbike booth

Pushbike to go, that bright pink Bullitt rocks!!
I got to hang out for a bit with cutie patootie Eva-Lu from the other sunny side of our Golden state. watsuppppp!
hallo!
Nan and friends at the b.spoke tailor booth.
Momentum magazine’s Mia all the way from Canada!
Dan and the Public crew

The pretty Christine and company at the Rickshaw bagworks booth.

– – –

Riding back

And then, after a long day of bikes and fun, we were ready for some food and then, more party!! A few of us from the fashion show, Dan from Monkey Electric, Mia and many other of our peeps, oined the Bike Savvy pedal ride back into the city. Good times!

I’d say we bike about 8-10 miles on the way back (Geneva> Alemany> San José> Valencia — Etc.)

Evening savvy ride crew

Monkeylectrique of monkeylectric.com
A mid-size ride is not complete without a flat. This is in the Excelsior, on Geneva and Mission

We. Are. Traffic.
Riding on San José in its entirety.
oh hai.
FOOOOOD!
Lucky charms
Sad face our new fixie friends didn’t get into the after party, which was 21+.
They had the coolest bikes. KLaw got to ride the one without brakes. Insane — Maybe next year!!
“how the hell do I brake?!”
parking our bikes at the afterparty

—
The afterparty was fun, but all good things come to an end. And this concludes the blog post for this year’s SF Bike Expo 2010.
‘Til next time!!
♥xxo.meli

Pictured: My dad’s 197X (1974?) Schwinn Varsity. Put some air in the tires, gave it a test run, and took it out for a GREAT ride this morning. It needs to be greased, tuned, de-gunkified, and have all the other things done to it that have not been done in 20+ years. But for now… Perfect. Solid. LOVE that bike. I’ve been window-shopping for road bikes for years, but I think my resources will be better spent “tuning up” this one. Love it. If it ain’t broke…